Ceremonial - Gummow.J - swearing in - CER

[1995] HCATrans 97

H I G H   C O U R T   O F   A U S T R A L I A

CEREMONIAL SITTING

ON THE OCCASION

OF

THE SWEARING-IN

OF

THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE WILLIAM MONTAGUE CHARLES GUMMOW

AS

A JUSTICE OF THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

AT

CANBERRA

ON

FRIDAY, 21 APRIL 1995, AT 10.55 AM

Coram:

BRENNAN CJ
DEANE J
DAWSON J
TOOHEY J
GAUDRON J
McHUGH J

In addition to the members of the Court the following dignitaries were present on the Bench:

The Honourable Sir Anthony Mason, AC, KBE, immediate past Chief Justice of the Court

The Rt Honourable Sir Harry Gibbs, GCMG, AC, KBE, former Chief Justice of the Court

The Honourable Sir Ronald Wilson, AC, KBE, former Justice of the Court

Seated behind the Bench were the following dignitaries:

The Honourable M.E.J. Black, Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia

The Honourable Sir Guy Green, AC, KBE, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Tasmania

The Honourable L.J. King, AC, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia

The Honourable D.K. Malcolm, AC, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Western Australia

The Honourable A.M. Gleeson, AC, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales

The Honourable J. Macrossan, AC, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland

The Honourable J.H. Phillips, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria

The Honourable A. Nicholson, AO, Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia

The Honourable B.F. Martin, AO, MBE, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory

The Honourable J.F. Gallop, Acting Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory

The Rt Honourable Sir Thomas Eichelbaum, GBE, Chief Justice of New Zealand

At the Bar Table the following persons were present:

The Honourable M. Lavarch, MP, Attorney-General for the Commonwealth of Australia

Dr G. Griffith, AO, QC, Solicitor-General for the Commonwealth

Mr J.J. Doyle, QC, Solicitor-General for South Australia

Mr W.C.R. Bale, QC, Solicitor-General for Tasmania

Mr K. Mason, QC, Solicitor-General for New South Wales

Mr T. Pauling, QC, Solicitor-General for the Northern Territory

Mr P.A. Keane, QC, Solicitor-General for Queensland

Mr D. Graham, QC, Solicitor-General for Victoria

Mr P.A. Panegyres, Acting Solicitor-General for Western Australia

The Honourable R.J. Ellicott, QC

Sir Maurice Byers, CBE, QC

Mr J.D. Merralls, QC

Mr D.F. Jackson, QC

Mrs S. Crennan, QC, President of the Australian Bar Association

Mr S. Fowler, President of the Law Council of Australia

Mr W. Sofronoff, QC, President of the Bar Association of Queensland

Mr M. Tobias, QC, President of the New South Wales Bar Association

The Honourable J.W. Shaw, QC, Attorney-General for New South Wales

Mr G. Humphries MLA, Attorney-General for the Australian Capital Territory

Mr C. Pullin, QC, President, Bar Association of Western Australia

Mr D. Habersberger, QC, President of the Victorian Bar Council

Mr J. Kable, QC, representing the President of the Bar Association of Tasmania

Mr D. Clayton, QC, President of the Law Society of South Australia

Mr G. Richardson, SC, President of the Australian Capital Territory Bar Association

Mr D. Horton, QC

Mr F. Callaway, QC

Mr W. Hodgman, QC

Mr J. Mansfield, QC

Mr K. Copley, QC

Mr J. Spigelman, QC

Mr M. Rozenes, QC

Mr J. Heydon, QC

Mr G. Zelestis, QC

Mr J. Garnsey, QC

Mr J. McKechnie, QC

Mr A. Sullivan, QC

Mr C. Barry, QC

Mr S.D. Robb, QC

Mr D. Rose, QC

Mr B. Walker, SC

Mr M. Joseph, SC

Mr M. Oakes, SC

Mr R. Clynes, President, Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory

Mr R. Smith, President, Law Institute of Victoria

Mr M. Stack, President, Law Society of New South Wales

Ms J. Schafer, representing the Queensland Law Society

Mr A. Melick, representing the Law Society of Tasmania

Speakers:

The Honourable M. Lavarch, MP, Attorney-General for the Commonwealth

Mr S. Fowler, President, Law Council of Australia

Mrs S. Crennan, QC, President, Australian Bar Association

Mr M. Tobias, QC, President, New South Wales Bar Association

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

BRENNAN CJ:   Mr Principal Registrar, please ask Justice Gummow to enter the Court.

GUMMOW J:   Chief Justice, I have the honour to announce that I have received a commission from His Excellency, the Governor-General of Australia, appointing me a Justice of the High Court of Australia, and I present you with the commission.

BRENNAN CJ:   Mr Principal Registrar, please read the commission.

PRINCIPAL REGISTRAR:  

I, WILLIAM GEORGE HAYDEN, Companion of the Order of Australia and Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, acting with the advice of the Federal Executive Council and under section 72 of the Constitution, hereby appoint the Honourable WILLIAM MONTAGUE CHARLES GUMMOW, a Judge of the Federal Court of Australia, to be a Justice of the High Court of Australia for the term commencing on 21 April 1995 and expiring on his attaining the age of 70 years.

Signed and sealed with the Great Seal of Australia on 29 March 1995.  Bill Hayden, Governor-General, by His Excellency’s command, Michael Lavarch, Attorney-General.

BRENNAN CJ:   Your Honour Justice Gummow, I now invite you to take and subscribe the Oath of Allegiance and of Office.

GUMMOW J:   I, William Montague Charles Gummow, do swear that I will bear true allegiance to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the Second, Her Heirs and Successors, accordingly to law, that I will well and truly serve Her in the Office of Justice of the High Court of Australia and that I will do right to all manner of people, according to law, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.  So Help Me God.

BRENNAN CJ:   Mr Principal Registrar, I direct you to take the commission and the subscribed oath of allegiance and record them in the records of the Court.

PRINCIPAL REGISTRAR:   Yes, your Honour.

BRENNAN CJ:   Your Honour Justice Gummow, I congratulate you on your appointment and on behalf of your colleagues I welcome you to the Court.

GUMMOW J:   Thank you, Chief Justice.

BRENNAN CJ:   I invite you now to proceed to the performance of the duties of your office and to take your seat.  Mr Attorney.

MR LAVARCH:   May it please the Court.  It is my very pleasant duty and privilege to welcome your Honour to the Bench of the High Court of Australia.  On behalf of our national Government, I extend to your Honour our very best wishes and our very great congratulations on your appointment.

Your appointment to this Court acknowledges that you have attained excellence amongst your peers; that your standing in the legal profession, that your work on the Federal Court of Australia, that your academic background and the reputation that you have built in relation to all these endeavours has equipped you to hold this high office.

On your appointment, your Honour, you no doubt would have seen a great deal of media comment, people automatically trying to put labels on you: whether you would be a conservative or liberal; how you would view particular issues that may come before this Court.  In my view, such labels and attempts to place labels on people are both simplistic and quite impossible.  But what I do know is that you will deal with each of the matters that will come before the Court based on the facts and the arguments that are presented before your Honour and that you will apply to these questions a very great intellect, a fine and complete understanding of the law and that you, as you have already demonstrated on the Federal Court, will handle the duties of this office in a fair and impartial way.

Your Honour was born during the war years and, sadly, lost your father while he was on active service on board HMAS “Perth”.  The “Perth” was lost with other allied shipping during the battle of the Java Sea.  After completing your secondary education at Sydney Grammar School, your Honour went on to the University of Sydney where you studied for a combined Arts/Law Degree.  You graduated with First Class Honours in Law.  Your Honour then joined the firm of Allen Allen and Hemsley as an articled clerk.  From 1966 you practiced as a solicitor with that firm and subsequently became one of its partners.  In 1976 you went to the New South Wales Bar where you practiced for a period of about 10 years.  While at the Bar you were briefed by the Commonwealth on a number of important matters including a number of matters before this Court.

In 1986 your Honour became a Queen’s Counsel and only a matter of days later you were appointed as a judge of the Federal Court of Australia.  The Chief Justice of the Court at that time was the late Sir Nigel Bowen from whom you received much support and guidance.  Your Honour gave outstanding service while on the Bench of the Federal Court and you enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for your intellectual rigour that you had brought to that court.

During 1986 your Honour served on the Judicial System Advisory Committee of the Australian Constitutional Commission which was at the time under the chairmanship of Sir Maurice Byers, a former Commonwealth Solicitor-General and pre-eminent among Australia’s constitutional lawyers.  As a member of the Federal Court Bench you have been involved in a number of significant decisions.  I suppose the most recent of those, in terms of the public’s perception at least, of course, was last year in the decision regarding the NRMA.

Since your graduation from the University of Sydney, some 30 years ago, you have maintained a very close association with the University and have lectured almost continuously at the Law School on a part-time basis.  And, no doubt, it may be a matter of some regret to your Honour, and I am certain to the University, that that particular association may have to come to an end.

Like the former Chief Justice, Sir Anthony Mason, you are an authority on equity and have co-authored several textbooks on equity law which I can assure your Honour are well known to all law students.  You have a reputation as a leading scholar in equity and these legal texts are not only cited in Australian courts but also in the courts of New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Canada.

Your Honour, you have single-mindedly devoted yourself to the practice of law and to the teaching and writing about law.  You are known for your legal skills, your quick and open mind and your sense of fair play.  I understand that your Honour is quite adept at the piano and it has not been unknown for you to entertain university staff students and friends of the law faculty on occasions, and I have no doubt these skills might come as an unexpected bonus to the Court.

On behalf of the Government, I again extend my warmest congratulations and good wishes for a long and successful career as a member of the High Court of Australia.  May it please the Court.

BRENNAN CJ:   Thank you, Mr Attorney.  Mr Fowler.

MR FOWLER:   May it please the Court, it gives me great pleasure, on behalf of the Law Council of Australia, to join in this welcome to your Honour. 

In recent years there has been considerable debate about how judges should be selected.  In this debate, the Law Council of Australia has used one word consistently and that is “merit”.  It is universally acknowledged that the appointment of your Honour is one that is firmly founded on the principle that judicial appointment, based on merit, is a principle that must always be observed.

The warmth with which your Honour’s appointment has been welcomed shows not only that there is wide-spread approbation of that appointment on the basis of your Honour’s personal qualities and learning in the law but that merit-based appointments are widely seen as essential to the integrity of our system of justice.

The appointment of a new Justice of the High Court always seems to produce a lot of speculation and conjecture, as the Attorney has said, about the effect that the appointment will have on the so-called balance of the Court.  In your Honour’s case, those engaging in this endeavour seem to be making rather heavy weather of it.  On the one hand, it seems almost to be suggested that it will be necessary to knock out a wall on the right-hand side of the Bench to accommodate your Honour and, on the other, there are those who say that some remarkable transformations have occurred within these walls and that Justices who have come to this Court with a reputation for being conservative are later found to be possessed of a hitherto unrecognised spirit of adventure.  Perhaps the spirit was there all the time but no one implied it from the Justice’s previous activities, although piano playing does give rise for some concern.

As far as your Honour is concerned, however, there is complete agreement as to your integrity, your legal learning and your skills, your commitment to whatever task you undertake, your courtesy to litigants, your scholarship and your intellectual rigour.  Your work as a solicitor, as a barrister, as a lecturer, and Judge give the Law Council of Australia the greatest confidence that you will serve this Court and through it the people of Australia with the utmost distinction and we wish you well.  May it please the Court.

BRENNAN CJ:   Thank you, Mr Fowler.  Mrs Crennan.

MRS CRENNAN:   May it please the Court, it is my privilege to appear today on behalf of the Australian Bar Association to welcome your Honour as a Justice of the High Court of Australia.

Details of your Honour’s life and service to the law have been outlined by the Attorney.  It is the variety of your Honour’s experience in the law as a scholar, teacher, solicitor, barrister, writer of leading texts and Judge of the Federal Court, which has enabled your Honour to develop an outstanding  reputation in the law, such that your Honour’s appointment to the High Court has been universally applauded.  Your Honour is steeped in the values, history, doctrines and remedies of equity, a body of law going far beyond the pre-judicature notions of conscience of even the greatest of the 19th century Lord Chancellors and central to an ample understanding of today’s law.

Your Honour’s co-authorship of leading texts in equity and trusts has as the Attorney mentioned carried your Honour’s learning throughout the common law world.  As well as equity, your Honour also practiced extensively in constitutional law, commercial law and all aspects of intellectual property covering designs, trade marks, patents, copyright, passing off and trade practices law.

Your Honour’s judgments in the Federal Court, most particularly those touching on intellectual property have evinced not only great learning but also common sense and fairness.  It was remarked when you were a Federal Court Judge that you showed what Sir Robert McGarran listed as possibly the greatest judicial attribute - even those losing in your court left it without a trace of resentment.

Your Honour’s elevation today will enable your Honour to return to an activity indulged in by few, avoided where possible by women barristers familiar with the 1990 reprint of Pollock on Possession and abandoned even by yourself in 1986 on going to the Federal Court.  I refer to the fact that your elevation means your Honour will once again be able to tell your former leader, Roddy Meagher, QC, now his Honour Mr Justice Meagher of the New South Wales Court of Appeal, when he is wrong.

Shortly after first meeting your Honour I had a rare experience for one of your Honour’s opponents.  I “stood over” your Honour throughout a short case.  I hasten to add this was literal, not metaphorical.  Your Honour had applied the tremendous enthusiasm you normally reserve for the law to something in which you were less practiced, namely your skiing, and a resultant and spectacular plaster cast of your Honour’s leg obliged your Honour to appear sitting down.  I mention this very minor occasion because the fact that your Honour was in court at all under the circumstances indicates a major motif of your Honour’s life apart from your learning; and that is your singleminded devotion to whatever work you have in hand. 

Since the abolition of appeals to the Privy Council in 1986 the High Court has set itself on a sovereign course to which your Honour’s considerable learning will make a significant contribution. 

On behalf of those I represent I congratulate your Honour and indicate to your Honour not only the great pride the Bars have in your Honour but also the fact that all their members look forward with great pleasure to many years of appearing before your Honour.  If the Court pleases.

MR TOBIAS:   If the Court pleases, on behalf of your Honour’s home Bar, the Bar of New South Wales, I join with the previous speakers in extending to your Honour our sincerest congratulations and a warm welcome on the occasion of your appointment as a Justice of the High Court of Australia.

Your Honour’s curriculum vitae has been chronicled in detail by others.  Your academic achievements are well known and were, most appropriately, acknowledged by the recent conferral upon your Honour by the University of Sydney of the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa, a rare distinction.

Your 10 years as a solicitor, and in particular as a partner of Allen Allen and Helmsley, and the experience you gained therefrom fitted you well for the next stage of your career as a member of the New South Wales Bar, to which you were admitted in 1976.  The President of the Law Society of New South Wales, Mr Maurice Stack, who regretfully is not able to be here today, has specifically requested that I give due recognition to those very important years of your Honour’s career when you served as a distinguished solicitor of our State.  The respect which you earned as a member of that branch of the profession followed you to the Bar where you practiced extensively and with great success, particularly in the fields of constitutional law, commercial law and especially banking, administrative law, intellectual property and equity, until your appointment to the Federal Court in December 1986.  As others have testified, you have, as was then expected, acquitted yourself with great distinction as a Justice of that Court.

On your call to the Bar in 1976, you occupied chambers on the 8th floor,  Selbourne, in close and no doubt welcome proximity to several distinguished members of the New South Wales Bar, including Kenny QC, Kearney QC, Meagher QC, McInerney QC and Heydon QC, some of whom are here today to do you honour.  They all, to some degree, influenced your professional life; generally positively, with some minor unrepeatable exceptions.  However, one of the greatest influences upon you during your time at the Bar was Sir Maurice Byers who, during much of that period, was the Commonwealth Solicitor-General and who led you in many significant constitutional cases before this Court.  Sir Maurice, a great constitutionalist ‑ and I have no doubt that the experience that you encountered as his junior provided you with a formidable education in the great constitutional issues of the day, the benefits of which you will now bring to the important constitutional issues with which you will be faced during your tenure as a Justice of this Court.

The awe in which your intellectual capacity was held whilst at the Bar is illustrated by the fact that in many particularly difficult and complex cases, you were retained in effect as a brains trust consultant.  In this regard, one of your great intellectual strengths is your ability to analyse nearly all legal problems in terms of first principles.  It is your principled approach to the resolution of legal issues during your time at the Bar, as well as your years on the Bench, that has marked you as both a barrister and a Judge in the great classical tradition.

Notwithstanding your Honour’s sharp sense of humour, often applied with rapier-like precision to demolish counsel’s carefully crafted argument where devoid of principle, you have also exhibited, especially during your years at the Bar and as a solicitor, great generosity towards young practitioners in the time and intellectual capital you have devoted to their advancement.  Over the years, by your activities in the law and by personal kindness, you have assisted innumerable students and young practitioners, many of whom have been your pupils and, later, your associates and who will always be in your debt. 

Your Honour brings to this Court an immense store of scholarship and legal experience gained from the practice of the law both as a solicitor, a barrister and a Justice of the Federal Court.  At a time when the classical and romantic attributes of judicial decision making are competing for ascendancy, it is not inappropriate to recall the pragmatic neo-classical catalogue of judicial virtues expounded by Richard A. Posner, himself a United States Federal Judge, in his 1985 work, “The Federals Courts: Crisis and Reform”, cited by Professor Glendon in her recent book, “A Nation Under Lawyers”.  They are self-restraint; self-discipline; implying submission to the authority of statutes, precedents etc; thoroughness of legal research; power of logical analysis; a sense of justice; knowledge of the world; a fluid writing style; common sense; openness to colleagues’ views; intelligence; fair-mindedness; realism; hard work; foresight; modesty; a gift for compromise; commitment to reason and candour.

Professor Glendon suggests that Judges possessing a full range of such qualities would, no doubt, be rare indeed.  Even if this be so, there is no doubt that each of those qualities repose in your Honour, thus giving rise to the confident expectation that your Honour’s contribution to the scholarship of this Court and to the law of Australia will indeed be worthy of your forefathers who have graced the Bench to which you have now been elevated.

At your swearing in as a Justice of the Federal Court on 3 December 1986 the then Treasurer of the Law Council, Ms Mahla Pearlman, as her Honour then was, remarked that your Honour seemed to go through a major career development once every 10 years:  admitted as a solicitor in 1966; admitted as a barrister in 1976; admitted Queen’s Counsel and a Judge of the Federal Court in 1986.  She then observed, and I quote, “I am sure your Honour and all of us in this Court will be looking forward with great pleasure and anticipation to 1996.”  She was a year out.  But her prophesy came true.  It only leaves me to anticipate your Honour’s next career move in 2005, but I am sure it would be idle to speculate.

The Bar of New South Wales regards you as one of its most distinguished former members and is justifiably proud of your achievements.  You therefore come to this Court with the universal approbation and good wishes of your former colleagues of the New South Wales Bar which, despite its rumoured imperfections, has, since the establishment of this Court, been the legal proving ground for many of its members.  We therefore wish you a long, stimulating and satisfying term of office.  If the Court pleases.

BRENNAN CJ:   Thank you, Mr Tobias.

GUMMOW J:   Mr Attorney, Mr Fowler, Mrs Crennan and Mr Tobias, I thank you for your words of welcome and encouragement.  A good deal of what has been said has been accurate;  much of what has been said has been over-generous.  Some of it has reflected upon what in truth is the work of others.

I think, particularly, of my co-authors.  It gives me much pleasure that after all the travails we have shared, all of them are here in this courtroom this morning.

There are many persons in this courtroom to whom I am permanently indebted for their encouragement, confidence and support.  I trust they know of whom I speak and that they will accept an expression of gratitude in general terms.  There are so many that enumeration now would be, I fear, to steal upon time.

On such an occasion it is hardly useful to refer to the past except perhaps to seek to explain the present.  I count myself fortunate to have come here, as the Attorney pointed out, after 30 years in all branches of the legal profession, 10 years as a solicitor, 10 as a barrister, 8 as a member of the Federal Court and, throughout this time, a law teacher.  Indeed, and I have alerted her to this, one former law student is here today as a judge.

It should be emphasised that there is nothing unusual in the members of this Court having earlier made time to teach.  The two immediate past Chief Justices did so, as did several of my new colleagues.  So also did Justices Rich, McTiernan, Kitto, Windeyer and Jacobs, to mention only those associated with the same law school.  The tradition in England has been quite different.  That difference may well have a significance not generally appreciated. 

One advantage which I hope I have derived from the above odyssey is some awareness of the particular challenges and burdens faced by each component of the profession.  Another is that although later happy to be a member of Mr Tobias’ Bar, I earlier had had the opportunity to develop links across the whole of the Australian profession.  I remember being sent by my master solicitor, in 1965 as a youngster and as a baptism of fire of a sort, which is the best way to learn to be a lawyer, to confer with leading solicitors in Melbourne and Perth.  The joint task was what seemed then extraordinarily complex drafting work on the financing for what are now called “national resource projects”.  What then was unusual has become the norm as the profession shoulders national interests and responsibilities.         

In time, I came also to work closely with the profession across the Tasman and it is most gratifying that Sir Thomas Eichelbaum is on the Bench with us this morning. 

I was fortunate as a young practitioner in seeing from the outset the leading Australian counsel of the day at work in this Court. In 1964 I sat in at Darlinghurst for several days; the Commonwealth Law Report, for the appeal was reported albeit belatedly, shows 15 days. I listened to Mr Bowen and Mr Aickin of senior counsel opposed on an appeal of interwoven legal and factual complexity. In the next year I was lucky enough to instruct Mr W.P. Deane in a constitutional matter in this Court. The subject was section 92 of the Constitution.

As students, we had been encouraged to ponder, if not to grapple with, a fundamental mystery of the law: to understand how, to adapt the words put by an Italian novelist and sage in the mouth of one of his characters, “How things must change if they are to remain the same.”  How to continue to apply and adapt those fundamental principles which are the fruit of practical experience over time and to do so in this  ancient continent.  How is it that mutability endures and thus gives the law its continued life?  Yesterday, Mrs Crennan quoted the words of Sir Owen Dixon concerning the administration of the law as “a living institution”.

None of the contemporary judgments from other countries seemed, to a law student, to be of much help on such matters.  Things improved when we were at first driven to, but thereafter looked out for, judgments being delivered in this Court.  I should mention in particular the achievements of Sir Frank Kitto and Sir Victor Windeyer.  Each had a distinctive literary style which reflected their grounding in the classics and was adapted to convey with clarity complex concepts.  What they wrote on any topic caught the young mind and fixed in the recollection.  They appeared seemlessly to connect what they were deciding with what had gone before, whilst showing the way to the future.

Much later, at work in the Federal Court of Australia, at trial and appellate level, I sat principally in Sydney but also in this city and in the other capitals of Australia.  I was made aware at the outset of the different nature of the burdens of each type of work.  I have been left with a deep impression of the heavy task of the trial judge and the increasing weight of that task.

It should also be said that innovative legislation now provides much judicial work of a nature which could not have been anticipated even 20 years ago.  But the interpretation of statute has always been a primary task of our courts.  One must resist the beguiling but false notion that the core of the legal system is in purely judge-made law.

This occasion must not pass without further mention of the late Sir Nigel Bowen.  Like many others, it was from him, and by observation of him, that I tried to learn how to be a judge.  He was always ahead of his time.  I now have in my possession copies of valuable United States treatises owned by him 50 years ago and more.  Reference to the best United States authority in private law now is commonplace, but 50 years ago there must have been very few Australian counsel who were familiar with, say, the contribution of Judge Learned Hand to copyright and patent law.

The words of a leading American practitioner, speaking of Judge Hand, also say much of what no doubt falteringly was to be learned from the great servant of Australia who welcomed me to the Federal Court in 1986 and whose door was always open down the corridor from my chambers.  It is said of Judge Hand that no facile evaluation is to be made of his judicial work in terms of any current fashion.  Rather, the values he served and which Australian judges serve are both more complex and more fundamental: learning, impartiality, an awareness of the limitations implicit in the special authority of the judicial branch of government in our federation.  And in the particular case of Hand, as a sceptical descendant of the Enlightenment, an intellectual detachment and a belief that the road to the result can only be along the quiet path of reason and reflection.

Further, in the system of law we have inherited, there is the apparent paradox, but fundamental proposition, that the judges belong to no one yet to everyone.  Sir Anthony Mason spoke yesterday and emphatically of this. 

I came to the law like very many of those here this morning with no background in the law whatever.  I did come with the boon, provided with much sacrifice, of a vigorous education at the Sydney Grammar School.  Throughout all of my time in the law I have been assisted in myriad ways by all manner of folk and to them I can only promise to do my best.

I should not conclude without saying how happy I am that Sir Anthony Mason and Lady Mason are here today.  Three points should be made at least. 

First, in 1976 when I was considering coming to the Bar it was to Sir Anthony that I turned.  I did so for what I knew would be measured advice.  This was given.  Characteristically, the advice was not extravagantly enthusiastic.  But then Sir Anthony paused and said, “Well, I was cautious on a similar occasion with one, Murray Gleeson, and Gleeson now seems to be getting on well enough.”  So I took some heart.

Secondly, it was Mr Mason, with Mr Meagher and Mr Hutley who brought equity to life at the Sydney Law School.  For the common law, that had already been done by Professor Morison.

The third point is related to the second.  It is that Sir Anthony must be the only Chief Justice of any superior court in the common law world who has relinquished office with two of his former pupils seated next to each other on that Bench.  And, as I have been discussing with Justice Gaudron, both of them from the same year of lectures.

I again thank the speakers for what they have said.  I trust that I may be able to meet their expectations in discharging the heavy responsibility now upon me.

BRENNAN CJ:   The Court will now adjourn.

AT 11.29 AM THE COURT ADJOURNED